Patreon blog takeover: as it happens, tennis balls are also good for concussing a smart@$$. (AdmiralBiscuit) · 5:52pm Apr 30th, 2021
deep breath
Does a tennis ball over a horn only protect against eye injuries, or does it also prevent spellcasting?
What about other kind of balls (racquetballs, ping pong balls for foals, etc.)?
Do the balls wear out and need to be replaced?
Do hollow balls potentially store spells inside them, thus necessitating caution to avoid spell leakage when such a ball is removed?
...o-kay.
First, the 'verse answer. Unless you are dealing with the weakest unicorn in the world, a tennis ball impaled on a horn can be shoved off by with a minor effort, especially since the whole of the horn hasn't been covered. The same would apply to pretty much any other kind of ball.
But that's not what you really wanted to know. You want the deep lore.
Tennis balls are designed to enslave unicorns.
It's very simple, really. Did you ever notice that just about all of the major menaces on this show initially appeared about a thousand years ago, and then they came back in the modern day? Do you know what that makes them? Well, yes, obviously the victims of a frequently recycled plot, but it also makes them old. Extremely old. Damn old. I mean, you may think Admiral Biscuit's jokes are old, but something has to look at all of these bad guys and say 'Hey, junior!' And do you know what really old villains have trouble with? Mobility. They just can't get around the way they used to. A thousand years does horrible things to your knee cartilage, and have you seen how many knees some of these villains have? Plus we're talking about mass, too. Tirek broke a lot of laws in his time, and square-cube is still trying to sue for damages. When you're that big, weigh that much, and you've got bad knees? You're no longer conquering the world because you're an empathy-free jerk: you're taking over because you had to get up the ramp last night and now everyone must share your pain.
And what you have trouble getting around plus you hate everything in the world and want to enslave it all, you get some tennis balls.
That's right, kids. You take a metal frame: one sized to your giant scale. Then you grab some unicorns, tie them to it, make sure their heads are facing down, and stick a tennis ball on their horns. And now you've got a walker. An evil walker.
Which is admittedly not as evil as it could be. True evil would mean leaving the tennis balls off, so everyone would have to listen to that horrible scraping sound which comes every time you push the walker forward and uncovered horns just screech against the bones of your destroyed enemies. But hey, you've got ears and you have to hear it too. There's limits.
So yes, of course the tennis balls wear out. Have you ever shuffled forward on a support system of enslaved unicorns while crossing a field of endless bone? Of course they wear out. Which is annoying, and you have to keep buying new ones. Also, the unicorns wear out. Something about being vertically inverted all the time. Their heads turn strange colors. But unicorns are a free, renewable resource and you have to pay for tennis balls. Plus since you collapsed all of civilization, including the part which produces tennis balls in the first place, the price for the remaining supply just keeps going up. Totally unfair.
Do they store spells? Don't be silly. They're not designed for that. (You can't store spells with spherical sports equipment. You store spells with a referee's whistle. One simple blast is known to create a temporary radius of Stop That. Oh, and you can keep an enchantment in a hockey puck, as long as you really wanted to cast Remove Teeth.) They store horn points, because unicorns wear out, but the horns don't. And so if it wasn't for the tennis balls, the scraping sound would never end, and then how would you get across the bone-littered battlefield where your enemies fell? By cart? You just took over the world! You are trying to look self-sufficient here! Just because you're old doesn't mean you can't destroy society! You just need a little support now. There's no shame in it.
...oh. Fair question. If horns don't wear out, then why not use dead unicorns? Because you're evil. Skeletons are always in vogue and you suppose you could deal with the rot scent from the intermediary stage, but going around bracing yourself on living, moaning victims? That? Is metal. And don't you forget it.
So. Unicorns (minimum of four) plus metal frame (or bone, if you must) and tennis balls equals walker for millennium-old evil menaces. There you go. That's the secret. And for those needing additional help in their senior conquering years, ask about our pegasi feather pillows and earth pony bottleopeners.
We'll be offering seapony bidets just as soon as we figure out whether seaponies exist.
Edit: Bonus question, was your first thought when you were notified I’d commented “oh no” or something similar?
To my recollection, it was IwillnotbanasponsorIwillnotbanasponsorIwillnotbanasponsor.
Second question, not really one that requires answering, but why am I still wearing my Santa hat? It’s been, like two months since Christmas.
You're sending a signal to the world as to the exact date upon which you would wish to die.
I do not intend to honor your wish.
If you want to dictate a blog topic, please see my Patreon page.
Please note that when it comes to the spring season, the smart@$$ quota may have been filled.
Not as metal as riding around in a bone chariot pulled by your conquered foes though. Then again what do old fogeys know about being metal?
I wish I could write as much out of a drive to entertain and tell a story as Estee can out of pure spite.
Let us not forget the golf-ball sized horn covers used by nursing unicorn mothers everywhere to keep their sensitive undersides from getting punched full of pointy pokes when ungrateful foals butt them during feeding. I'm afraid if you tried to take those away, you'd be subjected to a vast maternal trampleling. Tennis-ball sized horn covers are used for adolescent sports such as hoofball and mauler (otherwise called rugby) where a unicorn's pointy noggin might be considered an unfair advantage by other races in the process of four-hoof stomping. And let's not forgot professional hoofball leagues with wing covers and horn restraints, which have (ahem) other uses in the entertainment industry.
Between this and my question, we can really appreciate the duality of fan.
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Figured there was a reason most young unicorn horns are fairly blunt through adolescence. Ooh, new headcanon, there comes a proud day when every unicorn gets there horn sharpened, also the day they buy their first tennis ball
Interesting to see how carefully controlled rage correlates with creativity and verbosity.
That leaves 364 days from which to choose!
So, after reviewing all the Patreon requests, how many of us do you wish to concuss with sporting equipment?
Funny story: hitting your opponent with the ball awards you the point in tennis, so deliberately going for victory by default might just win a game of tennis the regular way!
5509834 And young alicorns get their first crossbow. (inside joke)
5509834
Isn't it more 'get shot with their first crossbow'?
Based on how the last month’s gone, tennis ball concussion sounds pretty good, actually.
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Picture putting fuel injectors in a F350, then an engine ‘cause the injectors didn’t fix it, then more injectors ‘cause it turns out that if you take them out and put them back in one might decide to just fail. And then when you think it’s working right, another injector decides to quit because why not, so it’s back into it again.
Also now that I think about it, if I mail you something to your super-secret PO Box, you might get a return address that’s close enough, and my only regret is not having the option of being whacked upside the head with a baseball bat before I started tearing into that dumb Ford.
C’est la vie.